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Just thought I would share my brilliant idea for fixing health care now that our government has passed health care reform. Yes, it will need to be fixed. I am completely stunned that politicians had the nerve to promote this bill by saying that it would reduce the federal deficit and that people actually bought that. Sure it will reduce the deficit because it involves a lot of taxes. A bill that raises taxes more than the money being spent will always reduce the deficit, but that doesn't mean it is a good thing.

The problem with health care reform is how to pay for it. Taxing wealthy people is always a popular idea but here is the problem with that. Rich people would rather pay a lot of money to evil geniuses, called lawyers, to find ways to not pay taxes than to actually give their money to the government. They will find a way too because the lawyers that are evil but not geniuses end up in politics. See the problem? The smarter guys prevail.

At first glance, adding 30 million people to the health care system seems to give some hope that health care costs would be cheaper because of the increased volume. Drug companies and medical equipment companies would be able to manufacture higher volumes which usually means cheaper. But health care reform adds taxes to those companies who will pass it on to patients and the cost will eventually end up with the government. In other words, the more the government taxes medical companies the more the government will have to pay in medical costs.

So how do we end up paying for health care reform when they find out that their current plans won't work? Tom's brilliant solution is to tax food based on its nutritional value to calories ratio. Healthy food would get no tax. Unhealthy food would get taxed in proportion to how bad it is for you. In other words, make it much cheaper to eat healthy. Make it cheaper to eat fruits, vegetables, and high fiber foods that potato chips and hot pockets. We Americans love our junk food and this fat tax would have the government rolling in cash. Talk about reducing the deficit... it would probably be gone in a year or two. Brilliant, isn't it?

It also will have an impact on the use of illegal drugs. We won't be spending our time fighting meth labs anymore. Law enforcement will have divisions dedicated to busting black market potato chip labs. We will see an increase in house fires caused by industrial sized fryers running out of control in people's basements. They will probably have to track the sale of cooking oil. This creation of a new vice may seem like a bad thing but hey, at least they won't be manufacturing meth.

Now of course we might not see such a windfall if everyone changed their eating habits and started eating healthy. But then we wouldn't incur such high medical costs either. And that's really getting at the issue. I can't stand reports that point to life expectancy and mortality rates of other countries and point to more health care as the answer. The real answer is is avoiding the need for medical care altogether. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have good health care coverage for everyone. I'm just saying that prevention efforts have been known to make the biggest impacts for a long, long time now. Ask anyone who works in the health field in developing countries.

So there you go. Develop a system that rewards good behavior. Simple.